Five Fabulous Fiction books to Gift your Bestie on International Day of Friendship
International Day of Friendship is the perfect excuse to spoil your best friend/s. After all, nothing says ‘I love you’ like a book. Here is some inspiration for what to gift this year. With books as good as these, you might want to start a book club to get all your pals involved!
The Sunday Story Club by Doris Brett & Kerry Cue 
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to cry. But the salons have given me the opportunity to look back and think about my life…I don’t talk to anyone about these feelings outside of the salon.’
We all carry stories within us – wrenching, redemptive, extraordinary, and laced with unexpected and hard-won wisdom. These are the real-life stories that a group of women tell each other when they gather for a deep and structured conversation – once a month in a suburban living room – about the things that really matter.
They discover that life can be a heartbeat away from chaos; that bad things happen to good people; that good people do outrageous things; that the desire for transformation is enduringly human. A mother tells of the heartbreaking loss of control when her daughter develops anorexia. A sister reveals the high psychological cost of being hated by a sibling over the course of her life. Husbands leave wives; wives take lovers; friendships shatter; wrong choices turn out to be right ones; agency is lost and re-claimed.
Big Little Lies by Lianne Moriarty
‘A novel that will turn you into a compulsive book-finisher … Moriarty has produced another gripping, satirical hit.’ Huffington Post
No. 1 The New York Times bestseller from the author of The Husband’s Secret and new novel Nine Perfect Strangers. Now an Emmy award-winning HBO television series starring Reese Witherspoon & Nicole Kidman. Plus Season 2 has just finished up so what better time to read the original hit novel than now?!
Madeline is a force to be reckoned with: witty, noisy and passionate. She remembers everything and forgives no one. Celeste is the kind of beautiful woman who makes the world stop and stare. But perfection is often an illusion. Jane is a single mum with a mysterious past who carries a sadness beyond her years. These three women, all with children starting at the same school, are about to tell the little lies that can turn lethal …
The Art of Friendship by Lisa Ireland
“STOP WHATEVER YOU ARE DOING AND READ THIS BOOK.’ Sally Hepworth, bestselling author of The Family Next Door and The Mother-in-Law.
We all expect our friendships from childhood to last forever…
Libby and Kit have been best friends ever since the day 11-year-old Kit bounded up to Libby’s bedroom window. They’ve seen each other through first kisses, bad break-ups and everything in-between. It’s almost 20 years since Libby moved to Sydney, but they’ve remained close, despite the distance and the different paths their lives have taken.
So when Libby announces she’s moving back to Melbourne, Kit is overjoyed. They’re best friends – practically family – so it doesn’t matter that she and Libby now have different…well, different everything, actually, or so it seems when they’re finally living in the same city again. Or does it?
Allegra in Three Parts by Suzanne Daniel
‘Accomplished, moving and thoughtful’ Books+Publishing
I can split myself in two… something I have to do because of Joy and Matilde. They are my grandmothers and I love them both and they totally love me but they can’t stand each other.
Eleven-year-old Allegra shuttles between her grandmothers who live next door to one another but couldn’t be more different. Matilde works all hours and instils discipline, duty and restraint. She insists that Allegra focus on her studies to become a doctor. Meanwhile, free-spirited Joy is full of colour, possibility and emotion, storing all her tears in little glass bottles. She is riding the second wave of the women’s movement in the company of her penny tortoise, Simone de Beauvoir, encouraging Ally to explore broad horizons and live her ‘true essence’. And then there’s Rick who lives in a flat out the back and finds distraction in gambling and solace in surfing. He’s trying to be a good father to Al Pal while grieving the woman who links them all but whose absence tears them apart. Allegra is left to orbit these three worlds wishing they loved her a little less and liked each other a lot more. Until one day the unspoken tragedy that’s created this division explodes within the person they all cherish most.
The Mother-In-Law by Sally Hepworth
‘Hepworth turns up the tension in her latest Australian-set domestic suspense novel. A masterful depiction… makes this a winner for fans of Liane Moriarty and Megan Abbott’ Booklist (starred review)
Someone once told me that you have two families in your life – the one you are born into and the one you choose. Yes, you may get to choose your partner, but you don’t choose your mother-in-law. The cackling mercenaries of fate determine it all.
From the moment Lucy met Diana, she was kept at arm’s length. Diana was exquisitely polite, but Lucy knew, even after marrying Oliver, that they’d never have the closeness she’d been hoping for. But who could fault Diana? She was a pillar of the community, an advocate for social justice, the matriarch of a loving family. Lucy had wanted so much to please her new mother-in-law.
That was ten years ago. Now, Diana has been found dead, leaving a suicide note. But the autopsy reveals evidence of suffocation. And everyone in the family is hiding something…